Underlord (Cradle #6)(35)

He trailed off. He wasn't sure how to phrase the question, especially not without using Harmony's name.

He just wanted to know how she felt.

“No problem,” she said. “I understand.”

But as she led the way through the darkened forest to the next site, her steps were heavy.

~~~

In the dream tablet, the Blood Sage—the Sage of Red Faith—manipulated his own madra. It was the same pattern as a basic cycling technique, but all tangled up in some places and reversed in others. Rather than waiting for the Shadow to feed on his spirit, he was funneling his own madra to it.

When you choose to channel your spirit yourself, the Sage's voice said inside her head, it contains your own will. In the short term, this will give the Blood Shadow more power over you, which is why the weak and simple will never even think to try it. But over a few short months, the Shadow will begin to act as a true shadow of yourself. A blood copy of your own spirit.

This is but the first step on the road to true power. As for the second...first, tap into your soulfire...

Yerin released the dream tablet, as she always did at that point. The second step of the Blood Sage's instruction was a set of soulfire control techniques, which at that point were about as useful to her as a bird telling her how to fly.

She and Orthos had followed Eithan to a patch of the shadow-drowned forest where the trees were covered in mushrooms that softly glowed purple or dark blue. They didn't look like soft, regular mushrooms, but rather like they were made of crystal. They felt like stone, too, but they still gave slightly in her hands. Like they were squishy, but covered in a hard outer shell.

The light hardly pushed the darkness back at all, and the aura the mushrooms gave off felt...strange. She couldn't put her finger on it, and since she couldn't open her Copper sight to look at it, she didn't even try to guess. But Eithan assured her they were safe to touch, so she peeled them off the trees and dumped them into sacks that Eithan had packed in advance.

Each one of the hand-sized mushrooms was worth more than a decent cycling sword back in the Empire, so she was cramming her sacks full. But that didn't make the task any less boring, so she kept her mind focused on advancement.

Or, at least, advancing her Blood Shadow. Her own advancement was on a smooth track until she reached the very end of Truegold or Lindon ran out of his miraculous water.

“This would be a fine place for a dragon to find an adventure,” Eithan said. He and Orthos had been chatting non-stop since they'd left, and Yerin mostly blocked them out.

“Once I'm at the peak,” Orthos responded, “the quality of the aura will not matter to me. You know that. It's a sacred journey.”

“One that is traditionally taken with family,” Eithan said. He was leaning with his arms folded and his back against a tree, but mushrooms still drifted into his sack. She normally didn't question how Eithan did anything, but pure madra couldn't lift and move anything. Curious, she extended her spiritual sense to him.

Vital aura was moving the mushrooms physically. He was controlling them with some kind of Ruler technique. How? Pure madra had no...

The answer came to her at the same time as Eithan said it aloud. “One of the uses of soulfire, Yerin. It grants you weak control over any aura, though it's practically useless in battle. Nothing even close to a real Ruler technique.”

She should have realized. Her master had lit campfires and brightened rooms with the wave of his hand, and she had long ago gathered that it had something to do with soulfire.

Then again, he was a Sage. No matter what he did, she wouldn't have found it strange.

Yerin ran her thoughts lightly over her dream tablets, drifting quickly through their memories. They had a lot to say about soulfire as well; the second stage of the Blood Sage's instruction was using her soulfire to push her own life and blood aura into the Blood Shadow. That would cause it to take on a version of her physical strength, personality, and appearance.

She focused on his vision of a complete Blood Shadow, raised according to his method.

Others, weak of vision and will, keep their Shadows as formless, shifting weapons. Or they feed the Blood Shadow with the powers of sacred beasts, creating monstrous forms.

She could feel his contempt flowing through her, even as his words were accompanied by flashes of image and memory. If she dove deeper into the tablet, she would find herself drawn into the vision, but she kept half her attention on harvesting mushrooms.

Such techniques show a pathetic lack of commitment. Bestial or formless Shadows are easy to control, but how can they stand up to mine? I am the first to perfect the true form of the Blood Shadow: an absolute copy of myself, a second body, with my own powers and will. It is often said that a Blood Shadow counts as an extra ally in combat. Is this true? Not for the weak and uncommitted!

For the dregs, it is worth only as much as a sacred weapon. What a waste of a Dreadgod's power! No—only those who follow my path to the end can truly be called masters of the Blood Shadow. It is a partner of absolute loyalty, who can operate in perfect coordination with me because its thoughts are my own. Such a partner is worth more than simply one more ally. Together, we form a greater whole.

She wasn't only listening to his words, but his thoughts. The Sage of Red Faith knew his technique for raising a Blood Shadow was an unrivaled power. He believed himself truly invincible against anyone of the same advancement level.